Google says it’s “deeply concerned” about reports that the MPAA has been secretly leading a campaign to revive SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and help “manufacture legal arguments” in connection with an investigation by Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood.
Google is referring to the campaign as “ZombieSOPA,” and has started a campaign of its own:
Let's defeat online censorship again. Tell the @MPAA to kill the #ZombieSOPA
http://t.co/RxWFCXUGGa pic.twitter.com/HDFEVoKhUH
— Google (@google) December 19, 2014
SOPA was defeated nearly three years ago in no small part thanks to widespread protest from Internet users and websites (115,000 of them).Opponents maintained that the legislation would have led to widespread censorship. According to Google, Congress received over 8 million phone calls and 4 million emails in protest of SOPA in a single day. That’s in addition to 10 million petition signatures.
In a blog post, Google walks through some of the recent reports, and writes:
Even though Google takes industry-leading measures in dealing with problematic content on our services, Attorney General Hood proceeded to send Google a sweeping 79-page subpoena, covering a variety of topics over which he lacks jurisdiction. The Verge reported that the MPAA and its members discussed such subpoenas and certainly knew about this subpoena’s existence before it was even sent to Google.
Attorney General Hood told the Huffington Post earlier this week that the MPAA “has no major influence on my decision-making,” and that he “has never asked [the] MPAA a legal question” and “isn’t sure which lawyers they employ.” And yet today the Huffington Post and the Verge revealed that Attorney General Hood had numerous conversations with both MPAA staff and Jenner & Block attorneys about this matter.
The company says it has “serious legal concerns about all of this.” It also points to a quote from the MPAA’s website about how the organization aims to preserve free speech, but is trying to censor the Internet.
Image via Twitter
